


Things You Can Measure

by ameliacareful



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean Winchester - Freeform, Dean is In Over His Head, Gen, Not depressed just soulless, Soulless Sam Winchester, Suicidal Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24413578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameliacareful/pseuds/ameliacareful
Summary: Soulless Sam just doesn't act like Sam.  Dean is finding it hard to deal with.  Soulless may or may not care.(posted from Tumblr)
Relationships: Sam Winchester & Dean Winchester
Comments: 27
Kudos: 107





	Things You Can Measure

> _MRS TRAN_
> 
> _Losing my soul – is it going to hurt?_
> 
> _  
> DEAN_
> 
> _Probably._
> 
> _  
> MRS TRAN_
> 
> _Will I die?_
> 
> _  
> SAM_
> 
> _No. You’ll just wish you were dead._
> 
> _(What’s Up Tiger Mommy)_
> 
> _\+ + +_

RoboSam was relatively courteous about the fact that he didn’t sleep. He tried not to keep Dean awake. Dean tried to think of him as Sam sometimes. Now that he knew Sam’s soul was in Hell, he couldn’t. It was like living with a shifter. But for whatever reason, RoboSam seemed to have latched on to Dean as a kind of compass. He asked questions and his questions always backed Dean into explanations that sounded stupid even to Dean. Like the night some very drunk guy was making a ruckus in a bar about what pansy asses the Bengals were. The game wasn’t local and nobody seemed to be particularly for or against either Bengals or the Packers. The bartender suggested the guy keep it down but Mr. Cincinnati-Hasn’t-Had-A-Real-Team-Since-The-Freezer-Bowl was on a roll. Until Sam got up, put a big hand on the guy’s shoulder and said, “You’re stupid, you’re drunk, you’re loud and you should shut up now because nobody thinks your comments are insightful.”

The guy was too drunk to care that RoboSam was 6’4” and 230 pounds with less than 10% body fat. 

It didn’t help that the bar was clearly on RoboSam’s side, although Dean wasn’t sure that RoboSam much tracked that kind of thing.

“Don’t you like football?” the guy sneered.

“Sam,” Dean said.

“Football’s okay,” RoboSam said to Football Commentary.

Football Commentary rose to his whole six feet of bro-dom, clearly in RoboSam’s space (except as far as Dean could tell, RoboSam didn’t much care about that, either). “So what do you like, sister? Figure skating?”

“The athletes are tough but the scoring system is too arbitrary,” RoboSam said. “The only sports that really make sense to me are track and field.” With that he picked the guy up, hauled him halfway through the bar and _threw him through the door_. He walked to the door and looked out. “Like javelin or the 100 meter dash,” he said. “Measurable stuff.” Apparently satisfied that Mr. Football wasn’t coming back in he came back and put two twenties on the bar and said to the bartender. “That cover his tab?”

The bartender nodded, frozen in the act of pulling a beer, beer overflowing the glass. RoboSam leaned over and pulled the tap off. “You’re wasting,” he said.

Someone started clapping and then the six or seven people in the bar all clapped.

“You can’t do that,” Dean hissed when RoboSam sat down.

“Why not,” RoboSam whispered back. “Everybody wanted him to shut up.”

“Just because everybody wants it doesn’t mean you should do it! If everybody wanted you to jump off a cliff, would you do it?”

“No,” RoboSam said seriously, “because why would I want to jump off a cliff? But I did want him to shut up. You wanted him to shut up. So why not make him shut up?”

“Because when a guy is a dick in a bar, you let him be a dick. It’s what bars are for!” Dean said. 

“Guys can be dicks in bars?” 

“Unless he was hassling a girl. Then you could shut him up.”

“So if there’d been a girl here I could throw him out?” RoboSam asked.

Jesus! “NO!” Dean said. “Only if he’d been, like, hitting on her when she didn’t want him to!”

“So when someone is a dick in a bar, you let him.” RoboSam said. “I think we should drink in the hotel room.”

Which was hard to argue with except being alone in a hotel room with RoboSam was wearing. RoboSam worked out and that involved serious inhaling and exhaling. RoboSam went for long runs and that was great except Dean always woke up when the door was unlocked. RoboSam researched and even though it had never bothered Dean when Sam researched, the glow of the laptop kept Dean awake when RoboSam did. Dean was happiest when the big guy went out and got some and came back hours later smelling of sex, disappearing into the bathroom to shower. RoboSam had sex a lot. 

Sometimes RoboSam just sat, staring at nothing. That was creepy.

Once Dean woke up to the familiar sound of RoboSam fieldstripping and cleaning their guns. He was barefoot and wearing only jeans (Dean wasn’t sure RoboSam really cared about clothes but he knew he was supposed to wear them so he did.) He was methodical. Dean was pretty sure that tedium was a big problem. Sam liked to read but it was hard to say RoboSam liked things. Some things engaged him more than others. 

Dean pretended he was sleeping, watching through slitted eyes. RoboSam finished reassembling the gun then did something odd—sliding the magazine in place and chambering a round. They didn’t store their guns loaded. RoboSam sighted along the barrel at the television, like a kid or something. Then he turned and aimed at Dean.

The muzzle looked huge.

Dean tried to keep breathing evenly, tried to pretend to be sleeping. He didn’t know if he should saying something like, hey, what the hell are you doing? It was just instinct. Everything is normal. Was the guy just bored? Desperate, some part of Dean’s mind supplied. Desperate for something. To feel something. To feel real.

RoboSam pulled the gun up and Dean kept breathing, easy in and out.

Then RoboSam stuck the barrel in his own mouth. He looked contemplative, finger on the trigger. 

He stayed that way for a long time, a lot longer than he had the gun on Dean. He didn’t look sad or scared, just thoughtful.

Part of Dean wanted him to do it. Wanted this to be over. Hated himself for it.

Eventually (in reality probably only about five minutes) he pulled it out. He ejected the round, ejected the magazine into his hand. He put the gun in the duffel, picked up the next one and stripped it.

“Go back to sleep,” he said. 

“I think I’ll sleep in the Impala,” Dean said.

It was weird to get in the back seat of the empty car and feel less alone than he had in that motel room.


End file.
